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For journalists

Source confidentiality, on your Mac.

Record interviews and press calls with on-device Meeting Notes. Dictate drafts, pitches, and follow-ups by voice. Ask the AI chat to scan a document on screen for the lede. No cloud routing of confidential conversations. Free.

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A field guide for journalists, updated May 4, 2026 by Branden Chong.

In practice

How reporters use Dollop.

  1. 01.

    Record interviews without sending them to the cloud.

    Hit ⌃ R when the interview starts. Meeting Notes captures audio (mic for in-person, system audio for Zoom/phone), transcribes locally on Apple's Neural Engine, and produces a clean transcript with timestamps and a summary. Audio and transcript stay on your Mac, source confidentiality intact.

    Heard

    key claims: source corroborates the May 14 timeline; says her supervisor was aware; declines to be quoted on the second meeting. need: confirm with the second source; pull internal Slack messages from the records request.

  2. 02.

    Dictate the draft.

    Hit ⌥ Space, talk through the lede the way you'd brief an editor, then edit. Dollop's cleanup adapter tightens the rough cut without flattening voice. Works in Pages, Word, Google Docs, your browser CMS, anything.

  3. 03.

    Ask the AI chat about a document on screen.

    Open the leaked memo, the legal filing, or the budget PDF, hit ⌃ S to summon the chat overlay with screen context, and ask for the key claims, the unanswered questions, or a plain-English summary of section three. Reads what's on screen locally; nothing about the document leaves your Mac.

  4. 04.

    Pitches and follow-ups with the right tone.

    Mail wants short and warm. Slack wants tight. Per-app tone matching shifts the same dictation across each context.

    Heard

    Hi Marcus, quick pitch: spent two months looking into the May 14 incident; have three independent corroborating sources and the underlying records. ~3,500 words. Free to chat tomorrow if interesting.

What you actually get

Dollop mapped to your work.

Meeting Notes (⌃ R)
Record interviews and press calls locally. Audio and transcript stay on your Mac. Source confidentiality intact.
Voice dictation (⌥ Space)
Drafts, ledes, pitches, and follow-ups by voice in any CMS or word processor.
AI chat with screen context (⌃ S)
Open the leaked memo or budget PDF, ask for key claims or unanswered questions, locally.
Custom beat vocabulary
Agencies, statutes, source pseudonyms, and beat-specific jargon recognized verbatim. No more "FERC" misheard as "ferk."
Speaker turns preserved
Multi-speaker interviews export with attribution so you can quote accurately.
Works offline
On a plane, in a courthouse with weak Wi-Fi, in a building where cloud tools are off-limits.
A type specimen

How the cleanup reads.

Real before-and-after dictation on terms specific to journalists, processed locally on Apple Foundation Models.

Interview transcript (acronyms preserved)
Heard

uh the f e r c filing was actually after the meeting on may fourteenth, not before like he said. and the qui tam suit was filed in the eastern district of california, not the northern.

Cleaned

The FERC filing was actually after the meeting on May 14, not before, like he said. And the qui tam suit was filed in the Eastern District of California, not the Northern.

Editor pitch (warm-formal tone in Mail)
Heard

hi marcus quick pitch i spent two months looking into the may 14 incident and have three independent corroborating sources and the underlying records. about thirty five hundred words. free to chat tomorrow if interesting.

Cleaned

Hi Marcus, quick pitch: spent two months looking into the May 14 incident; have three independent corroborating sources and the underlying records. ~3,500 words. Free to chat tomorrow if interesting.

Why it fits

Why reporters care.

Sources stay sources.

Rev, Trint, Otter, and similar transcription services all upload audio to a third-party server for cloud transcription. For interviews involving anonymous sources, sensitive subjects, or anything you wouldn't want compelled by subpoena to a third party, that posture is the entire problem. Dollop processes everything on-device, no upload step, no third-party AI vendor.

Free, no per-minute billing.

Rev charges $1.50/minute for human transcription, ~25¢/minute for AI. Trint and Otter charge per seat or hour. Dollop is free, including unlimited recording and transcription. The newsroom budget can go to reporting instead.

Names and acronyms recognized verbatim.

Add the names of agencies, towns, statutes, sources (or their pseudonyms), and acronyms specific to your beat. Dollop AI learns them locally. No more retyping "FERC" as "ferk" or "qui tam" as "key tom."

Works on a plane, in a SCIF, in a basement.

Recording, transcription, dictation, and AI chat all run on-device. No internet required. Useful for traveling reporters, stringers, and anyone working from places where cloud tools are unreliable or off-limits.

Asked & answered

Questions, answered.

Is Dollop safe for sensitive sourced reporting? +
Yes. Speech recognition runs on Apple's Neural Engine, transcription and summarization run on Apple Foundation Models on-device, and there is no network call in the recording or transcription path. No third-party AI vendor sees audio or transcript. Verifiable with Little Snitch or Activity Monitor. Full privacy posture here.
How does it compare to Otter, Trint, and Rev? +
Those tools upload audio to the cloud and most train models on user data unless you opt out. For interviews involving anonymous sources or sensitive subjects, that is a non-starter. Dollop processes everything on-device, with no upload step. The trade-off: Dollop is built for the individual reporter; you do not get a shared newsroom transcript library or team collaboration features out of the box.
Does it handle long interviews (60-90 minutes)? +
Yes. Meeting Notes records as long as you want; transcription runs in real time during the recording, so the transcript is essentially ready the moment you stop. The summary is generated locally in seconds.
Can I dictate into Google Docs, Pages, and CMS systems? +
Yes, system-wide. Dollop pastes clean text at your cursor in any browser-based CMS (WordPress, Ghost, Substack, Arc, Strapi) or native app (Pages, Word, Drafts, iA Writer).
Can I add beat-specific vocabulary? +
Yes. The Custom Vocabulary panel takes any term you want recognized verbatim, agencies, statutes, source names, beat-specific jargon. The adapter learns them locally.
What about recording laws? +
Recording laws vary by jurisdiction (one-party vs two-party consent). For interviews, the standard journalistic practice is to disclose recording verbally and make it explicit on the record. Dollop gives you the tool; you handle the disclosure consistent with your newsroom's standards.
Does it work without internet? +
Yes, fully. Useful when reporting from a plane, a courthouse with weak Wi-Fi, or a building where you cannot use cloud tools.
Hardware requirements? +
Apple Silicon (M1+) on macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence enabled.

You promised your source the recording would stay between the two of you. A cloud-routed transcription service makes that promise harder to keep. Download Dollop and keep the conversation where it belongs: on your Mac.

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